A more realistic future

Event suggestions

I have some concerns and advice about the way that events are in GC2 that might surface in GC3 as well.

A lot of the events make it clear that manpower (or slaves) is the main driving force of production and industry in the future. I think this is stupid for a few reasons, which I'll get into.

First off, even today machines are taking people's jobs, as they are cheaper to run and more efficient than fleshy meatbag humans, making many people redundant. Tractors, industrial plows, seed drills etc, Forklifts, robotic production lines and today automated tills, and even self-driving cars. The industrial revolution made agriculture employ very few people. Similarly, most all production jobs will eventually be done by machines, leaving most people unemployable through no fault of their own. The transportation sector for example is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) hirer of people, and very soon that can and will be automated. Robots are safer, more efficient and don't text and drive.

In GC man power is considered the main source of industrial output still, and this is a rather stoneage view for such an advanced civilization (unless you're like the drengi or something, because you don't have to pay slaves and they're kind of bastards) When in reality it would all be robots. Most if not all people would have to have a background in engineering and research, and even then their jobs would be at risk, as robots would be able to do their job more efficiently eventually, self replicate and optimize themselves, leaving a vast unemployable mass of potential colonists, volunteers and zero-outlook bored people which it will be your job to basically just keep entertained whilst the robots do the work and pave the way for their comfortable living.

Millions of lives should not be lost in events with the potential to net you serious bc or industry bonuses, because we have robots to do the dangerous work for us, and they can do it better.

"productivity" is still a quotient denomonated by individuals in the labor force. You are right, that the productivity of individuals have increased largely due to technologies that augment labor, but fundamentally, labor from the population still takes place and thus is the basis of production.

In a fantastical setting such as GC3 - your observation is likely correct that the concept of "population" itself is somewhat problematic. If you have a race of machines, what separates a "person" from a factory robot? Or what percentage of the total planet population is "non-productive" entirely (just as in the United States most people in the country do not actually formally "work" and thus are not included in the worker productivity measures), and thus why is planetary output based upon these "non-productive" persons? And furthermore, technological augmentation of labor taken to its logical extreme may very well result in no actual labor input from individual denizens...

A pragmatic justification for continuing to use population as an ingredient underlying population is that we can't really think of a better way to do it - this is true in the modern day as well, where the nature of "work" has changed to such a degree that it is likely that if you transported someone from 200 years ago to today - they would recognize very few people as "working" even though we all "go to work" in the morning. The idea of working itself could be broadly considered a social convention that would be difficult to predict how it may change in the future - thus people in the future would still consider themselves to "work" even though we would not consider what they do "work" in our current social convention.

I don’t think it’s as clear cut as the OP believes. What machines have done historically is increase the power and productiveness of the population and his has held true throughout this century too.

The reason this can lead to unemployment is if the efficiency gain is greater than expansion of the economy. However if you factor in colonisation of new planets you essentially would simulate a sort of hyper growth in the economy as the population expands across those new worlds.

Now a second revolution may be about to take place in the real world, it’s possible that during the next 50 years we will spawn truly intelligent sentient machines and indeed learn to expand our own consciousness into machines. Essentially using cybernetics to expand the ability of our minds as well as bodies. Of course the is presupposed on living in a universe where consciousness does not require “Special Sauce” , but is merely a consequence of the structure of our brains.

Now the universe of GC is we know not such a universe the Yor can only reproduce with “Special Sauce” to make them conscious as is established in the lore. How far AI could be taken in such a universe in an interesting question.

However it is realistic in the GC universe and ours that productivity in the future would still be population based, (although in our universe it doesn’t mean all of that population will remain organic). However Technology is a far bigger determinant of productivity than the formula used in GC3 would suggest. For example 10 farmers with 9th century tools could not do as much farming as 1 farmer with 21st century tools.

But I believe they have not more realistically modelled this in GC3 because it’s bad for gameplay as it means tech is everything and population has every little effect by comparison, it unbalances the game and makes it not fun in essence.

Now a second revolution may be about to take place in the real world, it’s possible that during the next 50 years we will spawn truly intelligent sentient machines and indeed learn to expand our own consciousness into machines. Essentially using cybernetics to expand the ability of our minds as well as bodies. Of course the is presupposed on living in a universe where consciousness does not require “Special Sauce” , but is merely a consequence of the structure of our brains.

the question i really want to know is will the consciousness in the machine really be mine or will it merely be a replica of my consciousness

If I made an exact copy of you right now assuming I could; you would both have the same personality the same memories, why would either one of you be more or less the real one.

You aren’t made out of the same molecules you were 10 years ago all the molecules in your brain and the rest of your body have been replaced since them. Not only that the pattern of your mind and body has also changed over the past 10 years that’s how you can form new memories and skills.

So what are you, a 4 dimensional pattern of molecules spread across time and space?

Anyway you would probably expand your consciousness into a digital media then slow shut down your own body and so maintain the illusion of a singular consciousness with continuity and avoiding duplication and the existential crisis you might suffer as a result.

Forklifts still need people to drive and operate them (I'm a Forklift driver in RL) atm! certain jobs like farming,carpentry and certain trades cannot be fully automated and even today certain specialised trades demand a higher premium as they can only be done by us "humans or Biological entities" as it were and starting out on a new planet people will have to do the basic work before the factories are built that can churn out these fabulous androids that can do everything.

The Galactic Civilizations series was first thought up decades ago. It was a different time and different ideas of where to go. The basic story for the GalCiv series was written long ago. It may have got changes over the decades, but if it changes too much then you might as well throw out the script and start creating a new game. I don't know if the script could survive if people were replaced with machines.

On a side note, even if everyone could be replaced with machines, it would take time to build them.

It always has been and probably always will be about "ECONOMICS". Machines don't make and spend money, people do. Even in Star Trek the only people who didn't really use some form of capitol was humans (yeah, like that's gonna happen). More population equals more capitol. More capitol equals more power. More power equals total domination. Game over!

On the other hand, if you have a lot of people you could have one hell of a black market for body parts, drugs, slaves, escorts, arms & such (very expensive, see economics above). Someone is always looking for a way to dominate everyone else and that takes capitol. As long as people have the illusion of freedom they will:

Be happy (bonus) and

Go to school (research), learn how to

Work hard (production) to

Make and spend money (wealth) so they will

Be the envy of others (influence) and afford to

Fight to keep there way of life (military) and/or spread their beliefs. (see economics above)

Machines are just a means to an end. (malevolent)

Machines help make jobs easier and safer (pragmatic)

Machines help free us to help our fellow man (benevolence)

You should read the book: "How Galactic Civilizations Showed Me How Life Really Is" by I. P. Freely

Me too. As a Kurzweilian Singularity is near type guy, I suspect there won't be any fleshlings in the 23rd century. It's something I'm going to have to reconcile somehow in the game lore at some point.

More abstracted development units would also get around the unrealism of vast numbers (billions) of population that get piled onto transports. If the number represents population and manufactured resources that would parallel the social and material strain an invasion represents.

Me too. As a Kurzweilian Singularity is near type guy, I suspect there won't be any fleshlings in the 23rd century. It's something I'm going to have to reconcile somehow in the game lore at some point.

So where does Galactic Civilizations go? The story still has 4 more chapters in my mind with the last chapter having many possible endings to it.

One of those endings results in the Yor becoming the dominant force in all the universe (not just the galaxy). As someone who has a healthy interest in astronomy, the sheer scale of the galaxy, let alone the universe is something I take very seriously.

In the dark future where the Yor take over, there are no living creatures anywhere. The universe itself becomes sentient via a Yor-invented material known as “the substrate”. Essentially it is material that spreads across the universe converting all matter into this material in which the Yor come to exist within.

The best (and still poor) analogy would be that this material is used to turn all matter into a single massive computer and all consciousness exists within this “Matrix-like” existence --- except there is no biological life. No one is connected to VR but rather all conscious reality exists within it with the collective intelligent of the the Yor being able to spread the substrate to all places at once through the folding of space.

Nothing in this scenario would even exist in the physical, material world anymore. All life would exist in the virtual sense within the Substrate. THAT is the goal of the Yor.

The Yor, of course, are right now merely synthetic organisms that exist still as individual physical entities in the material universe. They do not yet have the means (technological or otherwise) to realize their dream but that is their goal.

So where does Galactic Civilizations go? The story still has 4 more chapters in my mind with the last chapter having many possible endings to it.

One of those endings results in the Yor becoming the dominant force in all the universe (not just the galaxy). As someone who has a healthy interest in astronomy, the sheer scale of the galaxy, let alone the universe is something I take very seriously.

In the dark future where the Yor take over, there are no living creatures anywhere. The universe itself becomes sentient via a Yor-invented material known as “the substrate”. Essentially it is material that spreads across the universe converting all matter into this material in which the Yor come to exist within.

The best (and still poor) analogy would be that this material is used to turn all matter into a single massive computer and all consciousness exists within this “Matrix-like” existence --- except there is no biological life. No one is connected to VR but rather all conscious reality exists within it with the collective intelligent of the the Yor being able to spread the substrate to all places at once through the folding of space.

Nothing in this scenario would even exist in the physical, material world anymore. All life would exist in the virtual sense within the Substrate. THAT is the goal of the Yor.

The Yor, of course, are right now merely synthetic organisms that exist still as individual physical entities in the material universe. They do not yet have the means (technological or otherwise) to realize their dream but that is their goal.

I forgot about that^ Whaaaa! (Runs screaming into the night!) lol This should be interesting!

I agree factories should not need workforce. Simply a big NO. There is no excuse for that even for a game.Population should demand production/factories instead work in them. For example more population needs more factories like morale or food buildings.

4 factories on a planet with 6mil population should produce same as 4 factories on a planet with 12mil population. The only difference is that 6mil. don't really need 4 they could do well with 2.

Equally as morale and food buildings, factories produce things population needs and their demands are the resources of the planet and energy.Today's factories need only few people to control the machines. So either in real life or in game set in future population as a workforce is obsolete concept.

In GC2 I renamed factories and made some unique ones like Robot, Android factory or IPU (Intelligent Production Unit) of course they were just names, graphics with some extra bonuses but based on GC2 mechanics. However the idea was that factories are automated and based only on machines.

There is no single path for future this or that. Advancing technologically does not mean we'll become Borgs or beautiful empathic creatures. It's easier to destroy ourselves long before any kind of such advance.

From my perspective Yor or any other cyber race at some point they advance so much they could reach not just empathy but emotions, philosophical questions (why we exist etc.) So they will never reach their goal because they will end their existence and become an ancient race who probably sleeps and wakes every now and then.

And of course no race organic or cyber could dominate the Universe. Galaxies maybe.

In a certain novel one main character, a cybernetic being originally called CYIS was built. Its purpose is to elaborate to explain, but it slowly became Simi-organic over time. Shortly afterwards "it" began to live and maybe feel empathy, it even gave itself a name. Darca.

I would really like if the galciv and real world ended up like the Matrix, the trilogy is my favorite three movies/novels ever.

And yet you insist that in the future there is no way that there will be any correlation between population and production? Just because you have a certain view of the future, doesn't make any other vision nonsensical.

Somewhere in my garage (I hope!!) is a trove of all of my boardgames, including ... Avalon Hill's reprint of Metagaming's Stellar Conquest. I recall that it had a similar late-game issue of "populated" Factories vs. Robotic Factories. Some snooping unearthed the AH rules as a scanned PDF (buried near bottom of thread page 1).

Re-reading the rules shows just how -- prescient it was for its time. We still, in GC3, use a bunch of its terminology and concepts. Here's its pop/industry/tech "tree" subset relevant to factories.

Robotic Factory costs 3 ip, and generates 1 ip. No limit on the number buildable. So your airless moons with lousy pop limit can still become forgemoons.

Other players noted that Robotic Factories were ba-roken, and enabled a planet to turn itself into an unconquerable producer of death stars. I never got that far myself, so I have no feel for a late-game economy.

Anyways, that's one example where robotic industry is completely disjoint from population. OTOH, it became abusable for exactly that reason. So there are probably interesting game-design issues lurking here.

I don't know what the future will be like I haven't been there. But the idea that synthetic intelligence will lack Emotion is probably wrong, much current ai research points to emotions being an important part of intelligence.

I just am not confident in the ability if humans, (especially ones that are young idealistic and haven't experienced a personal death of a loved one.) to make "life" and program it. For what? Why not try upgrading the human body live longer/or forever? Sounds safer to me.

All this talk about the singularity misses something vital about human nature, I think.

I don't care if an electronic 'clone' of me exists somewhere. That's fine for him. It does absolutely nothing for me. If I'm going to seek a remedy for death, it's not going to be a wholesale replacement of what I am - it is, to the best ability possible, going to be continuous with the 'me' that exists today.. or no deal.

That may include technological enhancement of what exists already, in addition to medical treatments. It may include a slow 'growing over' of the existing neurological structure with nano-metal or whatever the hell you wanna call it.. but who cares, seriously, if somebody just makes a twin of me?

Furthermore.. emotion. Not gonna give that up. Anybody who does choose to do that is a literal monster. Ethically, it's gonna come down being judged like that. Just because we become robots does not mean we'll lose the basis for emotion - social bonds, material interdependency, uncertainty and the desire for safety and familiarity.

You can talk all you want about living in a virtual world, but as of any scenario we can imagine, there's still going to be a physical universe supporting all that virtual existence.. and that means that there's still going to be 'off switches' for everybody, and you better dang well pay attention to the physical world or risk death. The 'base universe' is still going to be the most meaningful field of interaction.

Furthermore, I'm going to borrow an ethical judgement from 'The Culture', a sci-fi post-scarcity society. They simply look at those advanced civilizations who withdraw from the universe as being anti-social. In other words, the attitude is that, well... 'hey, they've given up on helping? Screw 'em, we can do better than that. We're more involved'.